


Worth your time

by cupiscent



Category: Tenet (2020)
Genre: M/M, Masturbation, Phone Sex, canon-typical time shenanigans, mention of light bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 21:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30078741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: Just that thing where the agent on a mission sends a horny voicemail back to his lover. Except--and here's the kicker--the Protagonist is absolutely certain he isn't sleeping with Neil. (Yet.)
Relationships: Neil/The Protagonist (Tenet)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 35





	Worth your time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drawnonward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drawnonward/gifts).



> This one's for Shan, for only encouraging my tendency to make everything porny. 😂 This is short, sharp and shameless--enjoy!

When he got back to his desk, there were of course six messages waiting, never mind that he'd been gone for all of fifteen minutes, dropping by the new recruit basic training for no good reason other than his own personal interest and nominally keeping them on their toes.

Three standard notifications from temporal markers—nothing worth his attention at this point. A meeting request from logistics to go over the next quarter's resourcing. A mail-out from a marketing list that he simply couldn't seem to get unsubscribed from. And a blank email with an attached audio file.

He might have simply deleted it, but it had come via their internal system, from a field device not on the current register. So he found his earphones, plugged them in.

A rap of knuckles against the doorframe, and Wheeler said, "Boss?"

"Just a moment," he said, and hit play on the message.

A sigh filled his ears, and a voice said, "Fuck, I miss you."

He hit pause. He knew that voice. He'd just _heard_ that voice, down in basic training, swearing with just the same crisp, wistful intonation after the owner had been thrown over his sparring partner's shoulder and hit the training mat hard.

 _Neil_ was down in basic training. But this came from a device with a future-dated denotation. A different Neil. A later Neil. Sending a voice message to _him_.

He glanced at the playback window. There was a _lot_ more of the message.

"Boss?" Wheeler said again from the doorway.

"Yeah," he said, and closed it all down. Grabbed his phone on the way out, with all his messages duplicated on it.

A bit optimistic, really. What with one thing and another, he didn't actually get a chance to stop and think—at all, let alone about that message—until he was checked into a five-star hotel in Singapore, with a new line of stitches down one forearm and a six-hour-late dinner on the way via room-service. Settling into one of the plush armchairs with a sigh, he pulled up the message, and hit play again.

That sigh, that voice. "Fuck, I miss you." Neil chuckled, over shifting fabric. "I don't even know why I'm recording this. There's no point in sending it forward to you. From your point of view I'm going to be gone, what, thirty-six hours? Is that the non-overlap window? A day and a half for you, but months for me. You'll have barely found all my coffee mugs. And I am going—" Neil's recorded voice shifted, close and a little distorted, like he'd tilted the recording device hard against his mouth. "—absolutely nuts without you."

The voice felt so close. He could almost feel the sibilant hiss against his skin, the faint brush of the curve of lips around that _you_. A shiver stroked down his spine.

Room service knocked on the door.

He had a chance to think about it, as he practically inhaled the stir-fried noodles (far too fast for how delicious it was). He kept looking back at his phone, the earphones sitting next to it. He kept thinking about Neil. Nothing new there. Neil was everywhere, for him, in this business, even before he was actually here again.

He missed Neil. More than months, for him, since goodbye. He couldn't even count the days, time hopelessly tangled up by inversions and international flights. But it was more than a year now.

And yet he could still remember so much of their scant weeks together perfectly. Bickering over details and laughing over nothing and the swoop in his stomach as Neil pushed the car into the fury gear. Neil's hand in the small of his back in a Mumbai night market; Neil's grin in the mirrored wall of an Oslo elevator; Neil's hands on him, gentle, checking for injury only just springing into existence. He'd been too busy, in the moment, to think about it further—how Neil's slanting gaze had raised sparks against his bones. So sure there'd be time later.

He was carrying an unfair amount of history. He knew it. He was trying not to weigh the new Neil—the young Neil—down with it. But it was surely what had him so desperate to keep listening. It wasn't _his_ Neil, it wasn't a ghost, but it was something. Even if it was innocent.

Or not so innocent. When he tucked the buds back into his ear, and hit play, Neil said, "I miss your hands—not even like that. Well—" Neil laughed, low and intimate in a way that coiled inside him. "Also like that. But just little things. Your hand on my hand, on my shoulder, nudging me. This is the longest I've gone without touching you since—since the first time I kissed you." Another laugh, this one bright and sunny and so _fond_ that he slammed a hand at his phone without looking, cutting Neil off in mid word. "You wer—"

He pulled the earphones out, strode across the room like this little hotel suite might give him a reason for breathlessness. He felt like he was reading someone else's mail. Neil hadn't kissed _him_. (Not yet.) He'd never— _never_ —been able to touch Neil whenever he wanted, whenever he thought of it, whenever he could. (Not _yet_.)

He looked at the phone, where he'd tossed it on the hotel bed's immaculately white duvet. There was still so much of the message to go. The message that Neil _had_ sent to him, here and now—impossible that he'd be inverting for months if he was likely to fuck up something that small.

He wanted to know what it said. He wanted to hear Neil's voice. That laughter. That story. (The first time I kissed you.) He wanted to _know_.

"You were holding back, weren't you?" Neil asked, so amused that he could _see_ his bright eyes, the slide of his smile. "You must have been, just waiting for me to get up the nerve—and fuck, it took me ages. I'd been wanting to since…" Another laugh. "Forever. I was useless. So many bruises from being distracted by you in training."

It caught his breath, remembering just this morning (this morning? What day _was_ it?) when he'd looked in on training. The thump of a body hitting the mat, and the quiet sigh of Neil's expletive. For him, maybe. His fault.

"And then when I finally did, you kissed me back so intensely I—" This was less of a laugh, more an appreciative hum, that he felt in his bones. "You could have had me then and there, done whatever you wanted to me, in the bloody lift and all."

He fell back on the bed, duvet soft as a cloud, and fuck but he could picture it, in the elevators of the ultramodern skyscraper they leased anonymous space in. He could hit the emergency stop, watch Neil's lust-glazed eyes widen just a little at that before he dropped to his knees—

Except he could also imagine it in a different elevator. The flash of Neil's adrenaline-fuelled grin in a mirror— _told you it would work_ —and for a moment he'd wanted more badly than breathing to slam Neil back against the mirrored wall, to slide down that long and impeccably tailored body and suck him off so hard and fast they didn't even need the emergency stop. It was a tall building, that Oslo hotel, and they were both riding so high.

Neil laughed again, low and sinuous, like all his thoughts were visible and Neil found them delightful. "Add your mouth to the list of things I miss. And yes, like that. Very much like that." There came a muffle and slide of shifting and fabric, and then Neil sighed. "Fuck, I'm so hard just talking about this. Thinking about you."

Not the only one in that situation. He was getting muzzy with arousal, shifting the uncomfortable press of his erection inside his trousers. In his ears, Neil gave a voluptuous sigh, just shy of a moan. "Oh yeah," that voice muttered, sinfully breathy. "I'm doing this."

No room for doubt as to what _this_ was. Just the recorded sound of breathing—louder and faster and hitching—painted a vivid picture behind his closed eyelids. Neil laid out on a hotel bed—much like this one—with his clothing askew, or maybe entirely naked. He could imagine that—had imagined that. Had looked enough, in glances here and there, to fill in with speculation how good Neil would look—neck arched, stomach tensing, thigh flexing as he wrapped a hand around himself.

"Wish this was your hand," Neil murmured, and yes— _yes_ —so did _he_. "I wish you were here, watching me." The voice shifted, like he was stretching and moving. Like Neil was arranging his body, putting himself on display.

He gave in. Unfastened his trousers, kicked himself free in a heedless rush to curl fingers around himself, weigh his arousal in the palm of his hand. His feet braced against the bed and Neil's voice in his ears.

"Could you just watch? Could you hold yourself aloof? You could, couldn't you? So _restrained_." Neil's voice, smeared with lust, made the word into something lascivious. "You always are. So measured, until you're not. That moment, when you tip into motion, when you _act_ —"

The moan echoed in his ears as he stroked himself. He felt so very far from restrained or measured. He was coming unravelled, helpless to resist the pull of Neil's voice.

"Sometimes," Neil purred, and laughed—that _laugh_ , that always hit him in the solar plexus, that right now made him bite his lip against how much he wanted to lick it out of Neil's mouth, sweet and slow as honey. He turned his cheek against the duvet, pressing the bud into his ear, Neil's voice so close it sent a shiver through his bones as Neil said, "Sometimes I just want to handcuff you to the bed and see how crazy I can make you. Fuck yes—" It was a hiss and a sigh; it made him whine and tighten his grip, sweat prickling at his skin. "Like you're a banquet just for me. There isn't an inch of you I don't want to touch, to taste—" Neil moaned; _he_ moaned. "The things I want to do to you." Neil's voice was cracked, plastered over with harsh breath and lust. "How long could you last before your mouth falls open—do you know you do that?"

He was doing it right now, mouth open against the duvet, the fabric hot and damp from his not quite gasping.

"When you're close," Neil growled, "when you're nearly there, and your jaw drops and your bottom lip—god. I want to bite it, I want to run my thumb over it, I want to feel your mouth around me, so perfect— _fuck_."

He came, hot and slick over his own knuckles, to the sound of Neil gasping and shuddering in recording.

For a few long moments there was nothing but harsh breathing—in his ears, in his throat—and then Neil chuckled, a sound like lazy sunlight, over a filthy satisfied hum, and fuck but he wanted to see him like this. Wanted to feel that laughter through fingertips on skin, wanted to tangle them together in this post-orgasmic lassitude, wanted to kiss Neil like neither of them had anyplace to be.

He wanted to go back and have all the time that he could get his hands on, and the crazy thing was that _he had_. He wasn't quite there yet, but wow, this was clearly going to be worth the wait.

"Well," Neil drawled, beautifully indolent, just about smug with it, "that beat the boredom for a bit. Maybe I should send this forward to you. Just to let you know that you better clear your schedule when I get back, because I'm not letting you out of bed for days."

He grinned, even as he stretched for the box of kleenex on the bedside table, and started to clean up.

"Or maybe," Neil said, with that lilt to his voice that—even after a short and intense and interrupted acquaintance—made him stop dead. "Maybe I should send this to you now. I don't even know when I am, but I think it's… early. Should I do that? _Do_ I do that?" There was a pause, and he could nearly picture Neil, the thoughtful tilt to his chin, the hair falling in his eyes unseen amidst the possibilities he's calculating. "Is this why you were so keyed up, but still holding back, that first time I kissed you? Were you waiting all that time, knowing it was coming—knowing _this_ was coming?"

Neil sounded _delighted_ about it. Of course he did. Of course he did it too, sending this off in the internal messaging system, creating a temporal loop out of lust. It was ridiculous. It was probably inappropriate. It was making him laugh at the ceiling for the sheer audacious _Neil_ ness of it.

"So here you go," Neil said, smug in recording, the grin audible in his voice. "Find some handcuffs, Boss, and I'll make it worth your while."

And the file playback finished.


End file.
